Despair reflected in Harvey's eyes.
Toph looked at him, feeling an inexplicable sense of sadness. Harvey was thin as if a gust of wind could blow him
away. His complexion was ghostly pale, a shade of abnormal pallor.
Fate seemed relentless. It was like living in hell for being born into this family.
"I don't know why they treat me like this," Harvey self-mockingly smiled. "Since I was little, my father never liked
me. In my memory, he never smiled at me or even held me.
"And my mother, she's sometimes good to me, sometimes bad. Sometimes she indulges me, other times she hits
me even harder than my sister...
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt"And I found out about Jodie's secret ten years ago."
"Her secret?" Toph's heart lurched. He had overheard Chris and Lena murmuring that Jodie had no blood relation to
Delilah.
"Yes." Harvey picked up a pen, casually sketching on paper. A few lines twisted into distorted figures like a scene
from a chilling horror film.
Toph could tell that the twisted face was Jodie, holding a syringe, ready to inject herself.
"This is wrong," Toph said in a low voice. "The one she injects is you!"
"It's herself." Harvey's words dropped like stones into a calm lake.
Toph paused, hearing him continue. "That's the secret I discovered... I found out she often injected herself with
something. I was young then, naive about drugs. I thought she was doing something wrong and rushed to tell my
mother. But my mother slapped me, shut me up, and forbade me from saying anything.
"Especially..." Harvey looked up with a wry smile. "I can't let my father know."
Toph was bewildered. "Why?"
"Because Jodie has Type I diabetes. No one in our family has this illness except her. In Maisie's family, everyone else
except for her has this disease!"
Toph clenched his fists.
So that was what Chris and Lena had been murmuring about... Jodie wasn't a Newhouse. The true Newhouses
heiress was probably Maisie!
"She treats you like that and claims you're mentally ill openly because you discovered this secret?"
"Yeah." Harvey continued sketching. "Who would believe a lunatic's words? But what's most despairing in this family
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmisn't her. It's my parents.
"I think... Would my parents love me more if I could bring Maisie back?"
Toph didn't say anything, just sympathetically patted his back.
Harvey oversimplified things. Dealing with Wilfred or Delilah wasn't as easy as he thought, and the secrets in this
family were far more numerous than he had seen.
"I think you shouldn't dwell on this." Toph looked at him. "You need to protect yourself and get out of this place!"
"Get away?"
"Yeah. What's here to hold onto? If you're stuck, I'll find a way!"
A glimmer of hope flashed in Harvey's eyes, but that light dissipated quickly. What remained in his eyes was the
same darkness as before.